UPDATE: The protection racket seems to have worked with the ceasefire. Mohammed Morsi has emerged as the hero of the hour–for persuading his Muslim Brotherhood comrades to stop firing rockets at Israel. Morsi is now a legitimate player, Hamas achieves de facto recognition (and can claim victory for assaulting Israel with impunity), and Israel’s security is impaired. This is the first poisoned fruit of Obama’s re-election.

A couple of nights ago I ran into Dan Senor, a prominent Romney campaign foreign policy advisor, at CNBC’s studio, before my interview on the U.S. economy. Host Larry Kudlow asked Senor, now a director of the Foreign Policy Initiative, how Israel could negotiate with a Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt, given that Hamas is a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Senor replied,

The Egyptian economy is in devastating shape. The last thing the Egyptian government wants – even a Muslim Brotherhood led government – is a war on its border. The West has considerable leverage on Egypt.

Senor got it backwards, I believe: Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi encouraged Hamas to attack Israel as part of a protection racket, directed at Saudi Arabia as well as the West. In return for putting out a fire he helped to start, Morsi wants the West and the Gulf States to bail out his crumbling economy. Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States (with the exception of Qatar’s radical ruler) consider the Muslim Brotherhood a subversive organization and a mortal threat to their regimes and sent Morsi away empty-handed after his mid-August visit to Riyadh. Morsi is hoping that Gaza will shake money loose. “Nice little country you’ve got here. It would be a shame if something were to happen to it.”

This week, Egyptian officials began “making the rounds” of prospective donors — including the hitherto reluctant Saudis — to secure the financing Egypt needs to plug the billion-and-a-half dollar monthly hole in its balance of payments, the news site Almasryalyoum reported today.

It isn’t the whole story, but it’s a big part of the story: Morsi’s intention from the outset was to elicit the sort of reply that Dan Senor gave Kudlow. The Obama administration tried to push through a $450 million Egyptian aid package (plus $550 million of debt forgiveness) in October, but thought better of it in the advent of the presidential election. If Morsi emerges as the apparent peacemaker, watch for the Weekly Standard and the Foreign Policy Initiative to cautiously endorse financial aid to Egypt. After cheering on the overthrow of Mubarak and the so-called Arab Spring, a lot of reputations hang in the balance.

Morsi isn’t the only client for whom Hamas is launching rockets, to be sure. There are several other motives for Hamas to provoke Israel at the moment.

The first is Turkey, which is counting on the Muslim Brotherhood to stabilize the Syrian mess. Although Kurds comprise a minority of just 2 million in Syria, the possibility that the country’s disintegration will push them towards political autonomy might act as a catalyst for Kurdish aspirations elsewhere. The Kurdish demographic time bomb is a central concern of Turkish policy, as I wrote in an Oct. 25 study for the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. Turkey’s volatile Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan is inciting Hamas with Syria in view.

The second is Iran, which has supported Hamas as a cat’s paw against Israel throughout. Iran is sending a stark message to Israel as well as the United States: If Israel attacks Iran’s nuclear weapons program, it will unleash its full terrorist capabilities against Israel and the West.

The third is Hamas’ own position. With the Palestine Authority seeking recognition once again from the United Nations, Hamas wants to assert its leadership of the Palestinian cause against PA President Mohammed Abbas. Pro-Hamas demonstrations in the West Bank suggest that he is having a modicum of success. Internal politics inside Hamas may have added to the motivation for the terrorist organization to strike now.

It does not seem likely, though, that the Hamas offensive will succeed in any of its objectives.

60 Comments, 24 Threads

Kinda neat how that worked out, isn’t it? Israel demonstrates Iron Dome, and atrits Hamas’ stockpile. Now if only Israel could goad Hezbollah into expending their weapons in the north prior to the attack on Iran…

Of course, clearing out Hamas, the bastardized progeny of Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood Mafia, would be efficacious, in more ways than one.
Firstly, it would eliminate a strategic threat on our southern border, in preparation of dealing with Iran’s genocidal program.
In addition, it would then leave Israel to deal with Hezbullah on its northern border. And the ‘lessons learned’ in cleansing the strip, would come in handy after smacking down Hamas.
NOW, there is NO doubt that Morsi encouraged ALL of the mayhem, as did Iran.Let us dare not forget Sudan’s and Libya’s part in the weapon smuggling. And when it comes to Jew-killing, Shia & Sunni barbarians join forces. Islam & its relationship to blood are inextricably tied, especially when it comes to Jewish blood.
But most importantly, what just transpired, via the mischief making of the Islamist/Pyromaniac-Chief, is the stuff of nightmares – ours!!
For a recent update on the war/home front, see here – http://adinakutnicki.com/2012/11/21/brief-war-update-as-an-addendum-to-ceasedeath-fire-or-not-commentary-by-adina-kutnicki/

It’s very nice of you to think ahead (wink,wink)- poof and all is done. These people are old connivers, perfected their subterfuge in the bazaars selling bind horses to the unsuspected people and victim-hood to the West. There will NEVER BE PEACE just temporary cease fire until the next time,when they feel ready.You cannot build a future without knowing the past and oh boy do they have a past. Lets stop being naive Muslims will get us unless we get them first end of story .

“I will not try to guess what the Israeli government will do under extremely difficult circumstances. But if Israel does not act by April, its window of opportunity may shut.” Well, I can think of one country that might be willing to shut down its radar station at Gabala in Azerbaijan due to ‘technical problems’ so the IAF can fly by less observed, and then denounce Israel all the way to the bank when crude skyrockets (hint: don’t tell Mitt Romney’s advisors who that is).

The real issue is whether Obama now reelected would threaten to shoot em’ down en route to Iran, and whether the Israeli high command thinks the strike would be worth the massive fallout.

So IAF commanders are supposed to trust Putin to keep his radars off more than they trust Obama not to scramble F22s(?) … an interesting question. This suggests that an Israeli airstrike could only be in close coordination w/US and after President BHO gave “permission”.

It’s not a very palatable set of options, but better than Warsaw in ’42.

But yeah, we’re at the point now where the Max Boots of this world will probably quote the vociferous diplomatic condemnation from Russia after the IAF bombs fall on Iran just to save themselves the embarrassment of Jerusalem in desperation cutting a deal with Moscow over D.C. In their world view that could never and was never supposed to happen since Oceania’s allies must always be at war with or at least avoid dealcutting with Eurasia. After all what’s Congress gonna do if they find out? Cover it up probably to save all sides the embarrassment.

Of COURSE there is no incentive to Israel to stop WINNING in Gaza! I hope and PRAY that they FINISH it this time. Tell Clinton to go play with her girlfriend.

I’m sick to death of the hamassholes raining rockets upon Israel in the thousands and there isn’t a yip in the world about it. But if Israel launches one offensive to protect itself then the world wets itself in their haste to save the koranimals from themselves.

Genesis 22 :This is very risky. Why did God not go ahead with the sacrifice of Abraham’s son and raise his son from the dead? (Hebrews11) this was because of God’s great love for Abraham , Abraham not being God, God not bear to inflict Abraham with the pain that lasts for eternity to be the hand that would kill your own son that you love dearly ,miracle you waited for “forever” so God would not want to put Israel in danger, the importance of uniting the three Abraham faiths even if it means nuking Iran if that is the only way and after we still face the take over of the world by the atheist who do not want to share power with anyone with their great conquest blueprint of uniting the world without the True God and the little love they have is replaced by pragmatism for the elite among them to survive holding on to what they believe they own

i believe the first Jew was Issac and then their was Jacob and all the Jews came to be whereas this Abraham faith came from direct revelation from God so I believe the three Abraham faiths are the Jews the Christians and the 13th heaven and I can see how this Islam look like folly bit so did most of Jacob’s sons

“The major constraint on Israel, I believe, is not technical capacity”

I disagree, I think you are a couple of orders of magnitude off on what it would take to permanently shut down the Iranian nuclear program. It would take more that the 30 days of intensive round the clock bombing that was applied to Iraq in Gulf War I. That required at least 2 carriers and King Fahd Airbase. I don’t think Israel has the equipment.

Not true, Israel has the capability not only to take out Iran’s nuclear capability but to eliminate Iran period. The question is will the resort to this option as a meaningless act of revenge or to preserve their nation.

Taking out Iran entirely would require nuclear weapons, which I am sure Israel has. But, short of retaliation for a nuclear attack on Israel, nukes would not be used.

Eliminating their nuclear program would require the destruction of several facilities, which the Iranians have built underground. Probably the best way to do that, would be to destroy the entrances and exists, and their supplies of air, water, and electricity. Don’t forget, that Iranian air defenses would have to be rendered inoperable or ineffective.

Until and unless the Iranian obtain Russia’s S-300 anti-aircraft missile system (or one of the sub-systems in that family), the Iranian anti-aircraft system is supposedly easy to defeat. (In fact, again, wasn’t it Goldman who wrote about the Iranians shooting down one of their own this summer during a period of particular anxiety over Israel attacking?)

I don’t think the Israelis need to worry about either the ancient Iranian air force or its AA system.

Spengler alluded somewhat to the deal cutting/horse trading regarding the S-300. It’s now you see it Teheran, now you don’t, for the foreseeable future or until Russia can build its own UAVs and doesn’t need to buy them from Israel.

No Sir. Many out of the box ways to stop the Iranian nuclear weapons program. Here are two;
EMP weapons used against the sites themselves. The US Air Force has a new cruise missile that puts out an EMP pulse that will kill ALL electrical devices with half a klick.
Attacks on the power grid. Centrifuges require massive amounts of electrical power. Turn off the juice and you turn off the Centrifuge. Turn off the centrifuge and you turn off the nuclear program.
I’m sure there are more, I just am not current on Alpha Strike techniques. Lots of professional military types that are.
What is lacking is the political will to turn them lose. Neither of the two methods I listed will directly cause human casualties. When the centrifuges spinning at 30,000 plus revolutions per second suddenly stop, they will come apart. The pieces might hit a technician. Don’t think of it as Collateral damage but as adding a little chlorine to the gene pool.

“It would take more that the 30 days of intensive round the clock bombing that was applied to Iraq in Gulf War I.”

You have not provided any basis for this belief, and I believe your baseline assumptions are incorrect. Destroying Iran’s nuclear bomb-making infrastructure amounts to hitting a limited number of facilities.

This is not like trying to find every potential chemical weapon missile launcher in Iraq during Gulf War I. That capability was already developed and already deployed. Every missile launcher, which were prolifically spread throughout the country, was a potential chemical weapon threat. Iran has not yet developed their capability, nor have they deployed it.

and ironic as hell MarcH, the IAF might pull it off in return for Russia denouncing Israel’s aggression against Iran all the way to the bank. What a kick in the head that would be for the neocon crowd. Especially if Israel sweetened the deal with another big order of UAVs for the Russian army.

Israel has completed or is discussing UAV sales with countries including at least India, Azerbaijan, Germany, Spain, Poland, Holland, France and Australia as well as Russia. I would not overestimate the influence of sales of this relatively simple technology.

Indeed, I believe I read a careful and cogent analysis by Goldman here sometime in the past year taking a stab at the specific numbers of planes and munitions types that would be needed for a “classical” air-attack. (Please forgive me if I’m mistaken).

That being said, Israel has always excelled at doing things like this in a highly unorthodox fashion. If we assume she still has that ability to think “outside the box” then perhaps we’ll all be surprised at her eventual route.

For example, Israel may depend largely on local sabotage — just a thought. Remember there was a *massive* blast at a rather large Iranian weapons facility just as some high-ranking figure was supposed to be there. But the point is, the blast was apparently quite strong and knocked the place out for a good while.

Maybe there will be a combination of that first, followed by missiles (perhaps from subs?) followed by the fighter/bomber jets. My point is that even if one thinks that an orthodox bombing campaign couldn’t work, that doesn’t mean there aren’t other routes.

Very fine analysis. An hour ago the cease fire was announced here in Israel, 9 PM – by the a televised information given directly by PM B. Netanyahu, Defense Min. E. Barak and the Foreign Min. A. Lieberman. Will see when the next round is starting. As for Iran, Israel has the technical capacity to do it alone; but Israel is too dependent of the USA for the time being. There is already a visible shift towards Europe. In the end, neither Israel, nor the USA will stop Iran. Somebody else will do that, and it’ll be a surprise.

The fight-or-flight response allows people to exert triple their normal strength. The reason is that using this level of strength continuously would kill you, but in an emergency situation, the damage caused by using it is outweighed by the immediate need to preserve your own life or that of your child from danger, so your body will disregard the safety limits on its own strength to increase strength, speed, sight, hearing, mental speed and metabolism, sacrificing things like regeneration, immunity, and other less immediately necessary systems to divert extra glucose and oxygen to the brain, heart, lungs, liver, muscles and pancreas.

It’s the same with nations. When their survival is in imminent danger, they’ll do things they are quite capable of that they wouldn’t do under normal circumstances on account of the drawbacks. During WWII, we had full employment and rising wages, but the standard of living was actually lower than during the Depression on account of rationing and high taxes. It did get everybody back to work and cleared most of the private debts, but it’s not something we’d ever want to repeat in a non-emergency (the war-fighting itself aside).

Having talked to any number of people who lived through it, the American standard of living went UP during the war — farmers, in particular. ( They’d been hammered ever since the end of WWI — American farmers do fantastically well when Europe is at war. Revisit “East of Eden.” )

It’s not even close.

Destitute black share-croppers moved north en masse to acquire Detroit area defense manufacturing jobs. That’s how Detroit became a black enclave. It was lily white before.

Labor became so scarce that the bottom rung was pulled skyward. (With 0bama, all of these dynamics are entirely reversed — hence skyrocketing NAM unemployment, college graduate unemployment. He’s the anti-FDR.)

So, you’re talking through your hat.

As for Europe, yeah, everyone would agree that living standards went down.

The forgotten key to economic rebound during WWII, out of the Depression, was the implementation of “Parity” pricing for agricultural/raw materials production, from the point of view of not depressing production of commodities as happened in the early New Deal, but towards maintaining full production during the war.

The issue is that to win the war you could not let farmers go out of business. Farmers going broke, means less food, means starving armies around the world, which would have meant that the prospects of winning the war would have gone down.

Furthermore the support of commodities, allowed purchasing power to be balanced between the rural sector and the urban industrial/capital sector of the nation. This lead to support for increases in wages, through the increased purchasing power of rural America that built the initial source of wealth: Food!

The responsibility of Article 1, Section 8, as to the value of our currency was set by Congress, was satisfied in the monetizing commodities.

It worked, for it provided profits for the economy at its most basic level to any economy.

What caused the depression was the collapse of profits due to falling commodity prices due to free trade in the 1920′s.

The economist that argued for Parity Agriculture; Carl Wilkens, understood that
for every dollar of profit in the creation of raw materials multiplied out through the rest of the economy in a ratio that is 1 x 7. So every dollar of profit on the farm or mine, properly paid for production costs, multiplied itself into the rest of the economy.

If you do not pay for production, then you do not get this multiplication of profit happening through the rest of the economy.

Without profit there is no real investment happening.

What we have had instead of real investment in economic advancement, is a balloon in speculative gambling systems at all levels of society…Wall Street to the folks who without jobs that provided a profit, a good wage, were forced leverage their hard assets into debt.

All of this has forced a nation at a production and profit deficit to follow a militaristic foreign policy to keep the card game going.

Read Charles Walters book the Unforgiven: How America Exchanged Parity Agriculture for Debt and War

Buying the votes of the terror types in the mid- east is nothing new. She Saudis and the U.S have been doing it for years.
Its an easy way out diplomatically,works grea for stupid diplomats like zero and hillary. Trouble is it prolongs things forever and gives money for weapons that the terror types didnt have before.
We mights as welljust do a balloon drop of weapons to hamas.
I’m baginning to think that the only problem with iran going nuclear is that they could give it to othere terror types who want to make suitcase bombs.
As far as blowing isreal off the map,sems the winds might take some of that stuff across the neighborhood to hamas.

I have no doubt that if Iran gets nuclear weapons capability they would rather give it to terrorist proxies for delivery rather than trying to deliver it themselves. If they were really smart they would stage a “theft” of nuclear materials, blame it on Israeli espionage, and in the process give a couple critical masses of weapons grade U235 to a terrorist organization. Any idiot can make a gun-type modest yield weapon from 70 kilos or so of 90% U235, and by blaming the loss on a theft they could claim deniability. Of course, analysis of the fallout should give a pretty clear picture where the nuclear materials came from and I think that if Israel or any other nuclear weapons state were hit with Iranian uranium they would hit back with nukes of their own.

Analysis of The fissile material is NOT a Silver Bullet. You need a baseline sample. That requires co-operation on the part of the fissile material owners. I seriously doubt that Iran will allow their atomic bombs to be ‘fingerprinted’.
Then there is the fact that nobody has every tried for a ‘fingerprint’ after a rogue detonation. The technique was developed by taking samples from an American detonation where the fissile material was well know, then working the math to get from the end to the beginning. Easy enough when both are known, not sure what happens when only the end is known. Best bet of course is to prevent a rouge nuclear event.

And what the point for broadcasting strength to major opponent through being tough to a minor one besides distraction?
Whether they would totally beat the crap out of hamas now or later is irrelevant to Iran’s problem.

I agree war is exactly what Morsi wants on the Israeli border. If he can maintain a clean hand in the affair, it’s a win-win for him.

Morsi has his own problems. For five days there has been a running confrontation with police in the heart of downtown Cairo. It is anti-gov’t and anti-Muslim Brotherhood and it has at times been violent. This included the firebombing of Al-Jazeera’s offices right in Tahrir Square, after an MB member criticized the protesters on TV.

The protesters are far more numerous than the desultory marches against Israel when the Gaza affair began recently.

The protesters are observing the one year anniversary of a confrontation of several days against the police that left 47 dead and the ruling army without credibility. Now it is the MB in the Presidency and they risk their own credibility as they disavowed the protests a year ago and do so now.

By accepting the cease fire instead of pursuing victory over Hamas, Netanyahu has shown himself to be incompetent or worse, suffering from a serious failure of nerve. By allowing himself to be maneuvered into a cease fire by President Obama, who is reported to dislike him intensely, he has probably forfeited the upcoming elections. Why should Israelis trust a government that has shown that it can’t, or is afraid to, stop once and for all, enemy missles falling on their heads?

May be because… it is not the time yet?
With Iran problem looming I think he cannot afford to expend his efforts on a side show.
Now since Egypt is awarded its shake-down payoff some (albeit short-lived) quiet will probably occur.

Ya can’t make this stuff up. By ‘official’ count Hamas/PLO leaders claimed to have lost 183 lives to Israeli attacks while Israeli lives lost come to 5. I suppose by that (flawed) logic Custer was the real victor at Little Big Horn.

True, but the Islamists are guided by the slogan, “You love life, we love death”.

Also, as our host has discussed in a essays at Asia Times, modern western elites can become horrified to the point of surrender by enemy civilian casualties (even enemy “combatant (terrorist)” casualties) while Islamists view them as a sacrament (of course the Islamist leaders often have the whole array of overseas bank accounts, Dubai condos, etc.).

Thus it is possible for the Islamists to incur lopsided casualties and still have a victory*.

*Also the attempted murder and successful maiming of innocent civilians on a Tel Aviv bus was a apparently a great psychological victory for the Islamists.

I wonder if given the choice how many of those 183 would rather still be alive. Seems to me there are too many life-loving terrorists that are willing to give up 183 on their ‘side’ to take 5 on the Israeli side as long as it isn’t them. They should offer themselves up as cannon-fodder instead. There is nothing worse than a leader assuring you “I’m right behind you”. HUH?

David,
I can’t agree more. Morsi is counting on people like Senor to do his betting. Senor who worked in Iraq during Bush years thinks he’s expert in ME. The truth is he has no understanding how the Arab mind works. They may not be technically advance or sophisticated but they are master manipulators. Morsi would never would let Hamas to fire rockets into Israel, If Obama didn’t win the election. Erdoğan’s purpose of getting involved in Gaza mess is to prove his statesmanship
to Obama hence, trying his best to push America to do his dirty work in Syria. The one think Erdoğan doesn’t seem to comprehend is the centuries old Arab resentment toward the Turks. The Syrian civil war may prove to be the catalysis
of the new ME map.

All of your arguments are highly speculative and more complex than the much simpler idea that Hamas are nasty buggers and encouraged by the Arab Spring generally including Obama’s relection here.

Yet I agree for the most part with your conclusion, given all the known dynamics, the pressure for Israel to attack Iran now is higher than ever. And day by day, the nuclear option on attack also gains preference.

And yet the US has been somewhat surprisingly on Israel’s side in this episode. Stuff is going on under the surface. Maybe even stuff good for Israel.

Finally, I’m sure Israel would now like time to replenish the Iron Dome batteries and build another bunch of systems, I think the claim is they want at least 8 more than the 5 they already have.

Western support is an asset Israel cannot afford to squander just to punish Hamas. Hamas will give it other chances to be swatted; meanwhile let Morsi take responsibility for Hamas. This can’t help his popularity with the Egyptian radicals calling for a million martyr march. It will be a problem for Morsi, politically.
Israel can claim unimpeachable warrant (from the Western view), they acted entire on self defence grounds.
With Iran and Egypt and Syria bigger problems, Israel is wise not to tax US good will on a Gaza campaign, at this juncture.
Unfortunately this administration’s support is more of unreliable variable, requiring care, than what Hamas will do.

It`s the second author`s post with the same head-line.As after the first post`s reading I feel the opposite about the opportunity of the Israel`s strike.My previous fear about the wavering of the government`s position intensifies.

Not only Israel will act , but some major arab country will do its part, the dice is thrown , the USA will ” lead from behind ” as we observed in Lybia.
Do not worry about this interrupted gaza sting, it ‘s only a matter of time.